DETROIT - More than 800 volunteers signed up to help
teach Detroit students to read after Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb
said that Detroit Public Schools needs a "reading revolution,"
according to a report at mlive.com.

Bobb asked for a total of 100,000 hours of volunteer
time in response to last week's report that the district's reading and math
scores were the worst ever recorded on the National Assessment of Educational
Progress, according to mlive.

The Detroit Free Press is a partner in the literacy
initiative.

The Free Press reported that more than 700 volunteers
from across the metro area signed up online within 36 hours and an additional
140 people registered by phone, according to mlive.

"I have to have faith that the coming generation
can make Detroit, Michigan, the nation and the world a better place than the
one we are leaving behind," retired mechanic and self- published poet Mark
Durfee told the Free Press.

"We want people to have not just a sense of
urgency after seeing these scores, but a sense of outrage over these
scores," Bobb said in a statement at the district Web site. "But we
do not want these scores to paralyze us. ... Please volunteer with us and help
a child learn to read."